


i only wanna be (quarantined) with you

by zoeyclarke



Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Humor, One Shot, also gets dangerously close to crack tbh, also i've been wanting to write a covid fic so here you go, but we have sassy!zoey and love drunk!simon so yay, quarantine fic, this maybe wanders a little into ooc territory idk?, thought i would intitiate the simon/zoey tag cause why not, yes here i am the unfaithful multishipper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23514355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeyclarke/pseuds/zoeyclarke
Summary: “Okay,” Simon concedes. “But just in case I’m ambushed from behind while reaching for the last roll of toilet paper, you’ll have to cover for me.”(Zoey and Simon haven't been together for long, but they decide being quarantined with each other is better than being alone. Fluff and other funny stuff ensue.)
Relationships: Zoey Clarke/Simon Haynes
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	i only wanna be (quarantined) with you

**Week One**

“So it’s official. Everyone in California’s been ordered to stay home,” Zoey announces, flipping the TV to mute and tossing the remote next to her on the couch.

“Darn. Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Simon calls from the kitchen. She wanders in from the living room and finds him dishing their takeout onto two plates. “Or I should say, looks like I’m stuck with  _ you,”  _ he corrects himself as she leans over to pluck a noodle from one of the containers. “That’s my food, by the way. You got the one with rice.”

Zoey raises her brows and finishes slurping up the impossibly long noodle. “Oops. My bad, I totally forgot,” she apologizes, and he can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. Probably not, if the glint in her eye says anything. He finishes heaping the noodles, rice, and veggies onto their plates and nudges hers to the edge of the counter, which she takes with an excited little hum. Simon trails her back into the living room and it’s only then that she says, “And I didn’t exactly  _ ask  _ you to live with me, by the way.”

Simon spares her a curious glance at that wording. He takes his time chewing and swallowing to allow his brain to formulate a suitable response. He swears he used to think more clearly, but that part of him withered and died the day Zoey Clarke stumbled into his life with a gritted-teeth smile and peppy  _ “Howdy!” _ He’s found that since they got together, they’ve both brought out parts of each other that were buried before. In Zoey’s case it’s her sassy side, and in the past few months it’s really grown well into her, like a bonsai tree unfurling in her soul and filling in all the gaps with its branches. All Simon wants is to see her this happy, because she deserves to wear this teasing smile, deserves to flick his shoulder and nibble his earlobe, deserves to call him a “wonderfully wimpy wuss” when he covers his eyes during the shootout parts of the silly Melissa McCarthy action flicks she likes to put on.

(And the getting together thing— that’s a whole other story, the gist of which is that they could barely wait a week after meeting to get their hands on each other. And their debut to intimacy may or may not have occured on his desk one late night after everyone else went home, when she was wearing that fuzzy pink button-up sweater that he really wanted to touch almost as much as her hair. In the end, he got to touch both, a  _ lot. _ And more.)

“Well,” he says after a minute, settling on the sofa with his plate balanced on a pillow in his lap, “you haven’t exactly kicked me out, either.”

“Yeah,” Zoey admits, “and that’s just because you’re too likeable. And too hot.”

He leans over to touch his nose to hers, already knowing this will initiate a make out session before they’re anywhere close to cracking open their fortune cookies. With the entire world in virus-induced turmoil, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to check their fortunes, anyway. (And he can taste his fortune on her tongue, a forecast of bright and sunny days in her apartment even when it’s pouring rain outside.)

“I could say the same to you,” Simon mumbles against her mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She parts those pretty plump lips of hers, allowing him the entrance he’s been seeking. Zoey immediately deepens the kiss, pulling him closer to her until she makes a sudden squeak and they spring apart.

Simon looks down and, sure enough, his dinner has been poured directly onto his girlfriend’s lap. “Oh, shit,” he says. 

“Yeah, shit,” she agrees, but it’s broken up by a giggle.

Then he jumps into action, jogging back into the kitchen and returning a moment later with fistfuls of damp paper towels. Within a minute the mess, which miraculously dodged the sofa, is cleaned up and Simon has dumped the unfortunate noodles in the trash.

“I’m sorry,” Zoey says when he walks back in. She’s changed into a clean pair of pajama pants, ones with little stars all over them, and Simon imagines kissing each and every one all up and down her legs.

“Don’t be.” He walks over and she meets him halfway so they can gravitate into the same lovely embrace they always do.

He ruffles her hair and plants a kiss in the mess he’s made of her ginger waves, and she makes a hum into his chest that’s equal parts contentment and guilt. “Yeah, but still... your food—”

Simon shushes her, and she lets it go with a sigh. They stand there for a blissful minute until Zoey speaks up again. She’s had these words floating around in her head for a while, but now she just needs to put them in the right order.

“I was thinking, Si, would you... since, you know, this whole quarantine thing is really getting real now... would you maybe wanna be... quarantined with me?”

Simon leans back and gazes at her adoringly. “I would  _ love  _ to be quarantined with you, Zoey Clarke.”

“Really? I mean, you don’t think we might get sick of each other, or—”

“I could never get sick of you,” he whispers into her hair, because  _ god  _ he’s obsessed with her hair. To return the favor, she reaches up and massages his curls, because  _ god  _ she’s obsessed with his hair, too.

Zoey bites her lip, not totally believing him. “You’re  _ positive  _ about that?”

“Yep. Just as positive as I am that you’ll have to share your fried rice with me now.”

Her brow furrows as if she’s about to protest, but instead she gives in with a crooked nod. “Yeah, fair enough.”

* * *

**Week Two**

“Again, I really think we should’ve stopped by my place and grabbed some bike helmets first,” Simon worries as the car crests yet another steep San Franciscan hill. They slide into a parking spot and he shuts the engine off with a sigh.

Zoey unbuckles her seatbelt and takes a deep, steeling breath. “If we get in and out of there quick enough, we should be fine.” A sudden yell of anguish cuts off the end of her sentence and they both startle, peering out the windshield towards the source of the sound. This is worse than how Zoey imagined her mom’s confrontation over lemonade with the Beyoncé-loving sorority sisters went.

“I dunno, Zo,” he says. “It’s dangerous in there. Maybe I should go in alone.”

She gives him a scowl that cuts into him like lasers. “There’s no way I’m letting you sacrifice yourself! Who cares if I’m terrified? That’s beside the point. We  _ have  _ to go in there, one way or another. I’d rather both of us go down than you alone.”

“Okay,” Simon concedes, also undoing his seatbelt and kicking open his door. “But just in case I’m ambushed from behind while reaching for the last roll of toilet paper, you’ll have to cover for me.”

Zoey says nothing, only giving him a shaky nod to indicate her agreement. With their minds made up, they hop out of the car and cautiously make their way into the grocery store.

* * *

**Week Three**

“Oh my  _ god,  _ I can’t stand you, Simon! I  _ know  _ we’ve already watched  _ Spy  _ like fifteen times since this quarantine started, but Rose Byrne is hot and it brings me joy!”

Simon runs his hands over his face, letting his arms fall into a crossed, angry stance. “How many times do I have to watch Melissa McCarthy fall off a moped, Zo? My personal limit is three times, and that was exceeded on my first day here!”

Zoey crouches down lower on the couch like it’s her shield from the verbal darts he’s throwing at her. She curls her fingers over the back edge and hides her face so he can only see a pair of cool blue eyes and an adorably scrunched forehead. “How about you go bother Mo, then, since you two are so close,” she challenges.

“Maybe I will! Would you like that?”

“Go on and do it! Break the quarantine and kill everyone in this apartment building. See if I care!” Zoey falls onto her back in a dramatic surrender, feet sticking straight up and showing off a pair of socks that are mismatched in color, pattern, and length.

“You’ll miss me,” Simon snaps, storming over to the front door and snatching up his coat. The response he receives is too muffled to understand. Intrigued, Simon hesitates and steps back into the living room. Zoey is now face-down on the sofa, grumbling into a pillow. The movie that has become the bane of his existence is still paused on the TV screen. Simon bends over the back of the couch and places a hand on her back, keeping his touch lighter than a feather. “What did you say, Zo?”

“I said,” Zoey sniffs, flipping her cheek onto the pillow so she’s slightly more audible, “that of course I’ll miss you.”

Simon lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. He shoulders off his jacket and Zoey bends her legs to let him squeeze in on one end of the couch. Once he’s seated, her feet fall back onto his thighs. “I’d miss you too,” he confesses. Normally he’d add  _ More than I’d like to admit  _ to that statement, but it wouldn’t be true. He’s never felt like this for anyone before, not even Jessica, and definitely not for somebody he hasn’t even known for six months. But here Zoey Clarke is, propped up on a pillow next to him with her mismatched socks shamelessly laid out across his knees, and though it might not have been her intention, she really has captured his entire world in a snowglobe and shaken it up.

“I really like you, Zoey,” he murmurs, massaging her feet. “I like you so much, in fact, I think I’m willing to watch  _ Spy  _ for the sixteenth time with you.”

Zoey’s face glows in the dusk-lit room. “Really?”

He nods. “And how about after that, we try taking apart your microwave and putting it back together again? It’s kind of fun trying to decode the Chinese in the owner’s manual.”

She adjusts her position so that her head is now in his lap and she’s gazing up at him. “There’s no one else I would rather be quarantined with than you,” she tells him.

Simon laughs. “Likewise,” he says, then leans down to peck her forehead.

* * *

**Week Seven**

By the time COVID-19 loosens its grip on the U.S. somewhat and things slowly start to revert to “normal,” Simon and Zoey have fallen into a good routine. It’s simple, and very laid-back, but it works for them. They work in perfect harmony like two different songs blended into a remix together. They wake up in each other’s arms, he cooks (because since living alone, Zoey has only ever sustained herself on takeout), she washes the dishes (because Simon just can’t scrub a dish clean to save his life, at least not to her standards), they FaceTime friends and family who are feeling just as stir-crazy as they are, they watch the same five movies and binge TV shows they grew up watching, and they end the day with one of them inevitably falling asleep on the couch (if it’s Zoey who falls asleep, he’ll carry her to the bedroom; if it’s Simon who succumbs first, she’ll bring over a blanket from the closet and grab a few pillows and tuck herself in with him for the night). 

For weeks on end, Zoey hears only Simon sing to her. It won’t happen every single day— her power can’t be activated by the same companion day in and day out, she supposes— but when it does, she just smiles, sits back, and listens to him serenade her as if she’s high up on a balcony and he’s pining for her far below. Whenever they catch a snippet of news, whether it be in between channel surfing or swiping from one app to another, it’s stressful and never seems to get better. But then Zoey will look at Simon, or Simon will look at Zoey, and they’ll choose instead to relish in getting to spend time  _ together.  _ And that’s all they need. 

The day before things start going back to normal, Zoey can’t hold back the question that’s been bugging her for weeks— no,  _ months— _ now. 

“Would you... be opposed to maybe, I dunno, moving in with me?” she asks Simon that evening while they’re working side-by-side at the kitchen counter. “Since it seems like us living together has been working out great so far, I thought... I thought it makes sense.”

Simon finishes dicing the onion and tilts the cutting board over the skillet on the stove, neatly swiping the pieces so they land with a satisfying  _ hiss  _ on the heated surface. “Zoey,” he says, surprise rendering him breathless for a moment. He looks over at her, beautiful in the simplicity of her worn NASA T-shirt, and beautiful in the way she can’t ever tie her hair back without a few wily red strands falling in her face, and beautiful in that she can make the entire planet stop spinning with the slightest glance in his direction. That’s how she has him pinned now, staring at him with wide worried eyes. Already she looks like she has words of regret perched on her tongue, ready to backtrack at a moment’s notice if he chooses to decline.

“Zoey,” he says again. “I would  _ love  _ to.”

So when the stay-at-home order is lifted and the residents of San Francisco crawl back out of their homes, blinking bleary-eyed up at the sun, Zoey and Simon are the first to show up at SPRQ Point bright and early on a Monday morning.

“So,” Max says, stopping by Zoey’s desk on his way to refill his bowl with an excess of Frosted Flakes. “How was it with you and Simon in quarantine? Did you guys kill each other?”

Zoey shrugs and offers her friend nothing more than a playful grin. “Eh, only once or twice.”


End file.
